Part Eight in a series celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Edith Wharton’s novel The Custom of the Country.

Today’s the day! The first edition of The Custom of the Country was published 100 years ago today, on October 18, 1913. Happy anniversary to the book Edith Wharton called her “Big Novel,” her “magnum opus.”

George Packer wrote earlier this year about the experience of reading Anthony Trollope’s novel The Way We Live Now and finding New York society reflected in Trollope’s London: “Greed is eternal, but when the money flows as plentifully upward as in London circa 1873 or New York circa 2013, and is as unequally distributed, it becomes a moral toxin, saturates the world of culture, makes relationships more competitive, turns desire into the pursuit of status, replaces solid things with mirages.” The same toxic effect appears in the New York circa 1913 world of Edith Wharton’s novel The Custom of the Country, as money motivates both the beautiful Undine Spragg and the self-made businessman Elmer Moffatt to climb higher and higher in pursuit of the things they want, with little regard for the effect of their actions on other people.

In a wonderful new collection of essays on Wharton’s life and works, Edith Wharton in Context, editor Laura Rattray highlights the “breathtakingly contemporary relevance” of The Custom of the Country “in the burning embers of the economic meltdown post 2008.” Wharton’s criticism of materialism, cultural ignorance, and the dangers of extreme versions of Emersonian self-reliance is more relevant than ever.

Undine Spragg understands competition, and knows that beauty helps her win, but she doesn’t understand the culture she seeks to enter and dominate. She makes no effort to understand people, tradition, art, or architecture. She hurts her New York husband, Ralph Marvell, when she has her jewellery, including her sapphire and diamond engagement ring, reset. With no thought of the meaning of these “family relics, kept unchanged through several generations,” Undine changes them to suit herself, utterly “unconscious of the wound she inflicted in destroying the identity of the jewels” (Chapter 15). Later, her French husband, Raymond de Chelles, is shocked to find that she thinks he should sell the family estate so they have more money to spend. As Cecilia Macheski points out in her essay on “Architecture,” Undine consistently “misreads the architecture that she inhabits.”

This collection of thirty-three essays, on topics ranging from publication history, contemporary reviews, obituaries, biographies, and stage and screen adaptations, to gender, race, imperialism, naturalism, World War I, and the Great Depression, plus a chronology that places Wharton in her cultural and historical context, is a fascinating guide to the life and writings of a prolific, learned, energetic, and enigmatic woman who wrote some of the most enduring fiction in American literature.

It’s in The Custom of the Country that Rattray finds an apt metaphor for the importance of reading Wharton in context: in this novel, as elsewhere in Wharton’s writing, Rattray says in her essay on “Contextual Revisions,” “to deny context is to deny meaning,” just as Undine “violates context” when she has the Marvell jewels reset and arranges for the sale of the de Chelles family tapestries. (Her power does have its limits—she can’t quite pull off the sale of the entire chateau.) Context, writes Rattray, “is the Goliath glue that binds together the writer’s social, economic, literary, aesthetic, historical whole.”

In an essay on “Social Traditions,” Adam Jabbur makes the excellent point that while Wharton’s novels are often “Satirical and biting,” “they retain at least the shadow of possibility—an image, however unclear, of a future that has not lost everything of the past.” I can’t agree, however, with his subsequent argument that Undine is not Wharton’s “primary object of condemnation.” While Wharton has a complex understanding of her heroine’s character and motivation, and is even at times sympathetic to her, she is also very clear about the devastating effects of Undine’s ambitions on other people, especially Ralph. (I’ve written about Undine’s response to Ralph’s suicide in an essay for Persuasions On-Line.) The Marvell family and other members of the New York elite may be susceptible to attacks from ambitious outsiders and “doomed to extinction,” as Ralph prophesies early on (Chapter 5), but Undine is ultimately to blame for the callous way she manipulates her family, her friends, and her husbands.

First edition of The Custom of the Country

Through her portrait of Undine, as Linda Costanzo Cahir argues in “Wharton and the American Romantics,” Wharton raises questions about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance: “Fully unconstrained by traditional standards of conduct and devoid of any homage to custom, she, arguably, carries Emerson’s creed to its dangerously logical conclusion, and, consequently, dramatizes what Wharton understands to be the inherent flaw in Emerson’s doctrine. At its extreme, Emersonian self-reliance can not only mortally harm others, but also carry its practitioner to a world fully void of humanity, decency, and, ironically, divinity.”

Undine Spragg of Apex (U.S. of A.) vows to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She tells Ralph early in their courtship that what she wants and expects is “everything!” (Chapter 7), yet in the end, she feels “there were other things she might want if she knew about them” (Chapter 46). As I’ve suggested in my introduction to the Broadview edition of the novel, “she does not want enough. Undine may want all the things that signify social success, but her ‘everything’ does not include love, and this is the reason why her search is doomed to fail.” Edith Wharton in Context helps us understand the way Wharton lived then, which helps us understand what her writing tells us about life both then and now.

Writing with “dogged obstinacy”: In the summer of 1911, Edith Wharton was “digging away” at her “Big Novel,” The Custom of the Country, wondering if “dogged obstinacy” could “replace freedom & inspiration.”

“The books were too valuable to be taken down”: On Undine Spragg’s treatment of her son Paul in the last chapter of The Custom of the Country, and Paul’s experience of nightmarish library in which the books can never be read, and no one ever writes.

21 thoughts on “What Edith Wharton Tells Us About The Way We Live Now”

What a wonderful post. Really thought provoking. I have been offline for a bit, so this weekend I plan to delve into your other Custom of the Country posts. A nice magnum opus yourself! Happy 100th to the Custom of the Country!!

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s a big anniversary for that big novel. And thanks for your post today on Wharton’s ghost stories — a reminder that this month is a great time to reread them. I think I’ll start with “Kerfol” because it’s the one featured at The Mount on Halloween.

I keep coming back to your Wharton posts, Sarah. They are so thought provoking and so well researched.

I’ve been thinking about the names of a couple of characters: Ralph Marvell and Charles Bowen.

Do you think Wharton named Ralph Marvell — not only after Emerson, but — after Anthony Marvel (the poet)?

I’m also thinking she may have named Charles Bowen after Darwin since she was intrigued by his work and Bowen’s theory about Undine speaks of the person (“Undine”) as a product of the environment with no spiritual aspects.

Thanks so much, Mary. I’m happy to hear you’re continuing to enjoy these posts. Do you know, I hadn’t even thought of Emerson. But of course, now that you say it, the allusion seems obvious. And you must be thinking of Andrew Marvell — yes, I do think she had him in mind. I like your suggestion about Charles Bowen, too. How are your preparations for your Wharton event?

I think it will go well. John will be focusing on The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome. I had planned to talk about The Custom of the Country, but am wondering — if no one in the audience has read it — whether I should spend some time talking about The Decoration of Houses.
I’m enjoying that book more than I had imagined and am wondering if I should “play it safe” and talk about something that everyone can relate to (her thoughts on interior design). I was told that the book club (at the library) has already read Ethan Frome and they’re currently reading The House of Mirth.
So…I don’t know. What do you think? If you started a lecture and asked the audience, “Has anyone here read The Custom of the Country,” and no one raised their hand, would you continue to talk about Undine Spragg or have a Plan B? I’m a little concerned about that and unsure of how to handle it. Any thoughts?

Oh, I would definitely keep talking about Undine! You’d have the pleasure of introducing people to a new and very powerful book, with a memorable heroine. There will probably be someone who hasn’t read it, so you could start with a brief introduction to the book and then get into a bit more analysis if you like, without giving away the ending (or what happens to Ralph). And if they’ve already read The House of Mirth, then you can tell them about the sharp contrast between Lily and Undine.

P.S. My last blog regarding The Decoration of Houses, btw, was sort of an experiment. I posted it on facebook to see if there was any interest in the topic (likes/comments) and I am getting some feedback I think people enjoy talking about ways to improve their surroundings/homes….so maybe that’s the way to go?

I can see that people would be interested in Wharton’s ideas about design. But I’d still choose the novel over The Decoration of Houses (not just because I edited The Custom of the Country, but because I think Wharton’s fiction is so fascinating).

Okay, I trust your judgement. Maybe if I start with the tragedy of Lily Bart — and then introduce Undine as an example of how Wharton used one of her characters to overcome the same oppressing circumstances, it would help them to engage. I can also compare Undine to characters they might be familiar with….like Scarlett O’Hara. I just hope I can do the book justice. It’s such a masterpiece. If my enthusiasm comes through, that will of course help as well. 🙂

Thanks! I’m feeling more confident about it today after looking over my notes. There’s so much to cover! Undine, names, divorce, transactions, Wharton’s personal feelings about Europe and the US…. John and I will be doing a run through Thursday night (we need to time it). I’ll be referencing your book at the presentation, btw, and often! Your book and your blog have provided great insight. So grateful!

I’m very glad to hear you’re feeling more confident about it, and of course glad to know my book and blog have been helpful. All the best for your practice on Thursday and for the remaining preparations!

I am not familiar with Linda Constanzo Cahir’s work, but it does surprise me that she associates Emerson’s philosophy of “Self Reliance” with the behavior of Undine Spragg, “fully unconstrained by traditional standards of conduct and devoid of any homage to custom”. I believe that Emerson’s philosophy was constructed as the thoughtful American’s protection from Spraggism! Generations of American artists and writers have sought to transcend the overtly crass materialism that can emerge and dominate one’s sense of a culture- if one allows it.

Indeed Edith Wharton had the income and wherewithal to remove herself to Paris, so that she could write about American themes. Others less inclined or able to travel elsewhere to do this sort of work, have often found solace and inspiration in the works of Emerson and Thoreau, as well as the later published (1923) Robert Henri’s “The Art Spirit”.

Interesting point, Victoria. Cahir suggests that Wharton was inspired by Emerson in her personal life, but that in her fiction she was more ambivalent about his philosophy. Her essay in Edith Wharton in Context argues that “In Undine, [Wharton] creates the paradigmatic self-reliant character who trusts herself with absolute surety.” If one is materialistic to begin with, then self-reliance taken to extremes is dangerous. Undine makes her choices without reference to anyone other than herself, and without reference to any kind of cultural context.

Welcome!

I write about Jane Austen, Jane Austen for kids, and Edith Wharton. Sometimes I post about other writers I admire, such as L.M. Montgomery, and about places I love (especially Nova Scotia and Alberta). I taught writing at Harvard University before I decided to come home to Nova Scotia to write full time.

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"I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; And though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other." Jane Austen to James Stanier Clarke, 1 April 1816

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